6 Keys To Unlocking Affiliate Marketing Profits

It's always one of those, "I can't believe it's true" moments for new affiliates when they discover the world of affiliate marketing. It's the realization that you don't have to worry about product development, shipping, handling customer complaints, or dealing with refunds that excite new comers the most, not to mention the money that can be made.

Yes it's certainly a wonderful moment when the penny drops about the awesome potential that affiliate marketing offers. However this feeling of euphoria, over the endless possibilities that lie ahead, must be tempered just a little with some down to earth business building disciplines.

The Following Six Keys Are Foundational To Unlocking Affiliate Marketing Profits

1) Patience:

This is probably the most overlooked business building discipline among newbie marketers today. When a person is exposed to the raw potential of affiliate marketing, a good deal of excitement will be bubbling away inside. This excitement (in some cases, over excitement) often leads people into making rushed decisions.

Rushed decision making is never a good thing when trying to build a profitable online business. Jumping in feet first without due consideration for what you're actually signing up for can have catastrophic consequences. For example, lets say you just invested several hundred dollars into an advertising campaign simply because you read a sales page promising instant guaranteed results if you advertise with abc company. You're hoping to see eye popping results, but...

Well, I can tell you from personal experience, you've probably just lost a lot of money. I've been there and done that; I've lost my fair share of money to these bogus marketing claims in the past. It's painful! The moral to my story is this: Exercise a little patience; give yourself a little breathing space to think through carefully if a particular course of action is worth the risk.

Patience is also needed to see your business grow in profitability. Patience, it is said, is a virtue.

It
took years for the likes of MacDonald’s and Microsoft to be a successful. It took years for many of the major brands, you see around today, to become successful. Affiliate marketing is not all that different.

Most experts in the industry will tell you that it takes, on average, two to five years for an affiliate marketer to establish a solid profitable online business. There are exceptions to this rule, but they're few and far between.

2) Focus only on one or two products at a time:

A common mistake made by many newcomers is trying to promote as many products as they can, hoping that one of them will make a killing in profits. This is like throwing a handful darts at a dart board hoping that at least one dart will hit the bulls eye!

It's far better to grab a single product that you know is already selling well, learn how to master promoting it before you move onto another product. To use the dart board analogy again, this is like a skilled darts player throwing a single dart and hitting the bulls eye with the first, second, and even third attempt.

3) Choose the right product:

This is a profoundly simple thing to do, and yet many fail to get his crucial step right. Choosing the right affiliate product to market can be the difference between making huge profits or tragic losses.

A little savvy research will go along way here. What you want to search for is what's already selling. How do you do that? There are several ways, but for the sake of time I'll briefly explain how I choose affiliate products from one of my favorite sites, ClickBank.com

When I'm searching for a product that's a hot seller, I look for a little thing called "gravity." This is a number that sits just at the end of the product description that tells you how many sales were made in that month. It's simple math really, the higher the 'gravity number,' the more times that product has already been sold. It looks something like this, (grav:157). This means that particular product has been sold 157 times in the current month. Only choose a product that's already selling!

I've tested this out by going in the opposite direction and choosing a product with low gravity, and to my surprise I could not sell it, why? Well, you'd think less gravity means less competition right? Wrong! If a product has no gravity or a low gravity it means that nobody is having any luck selling it, probably because there's no market for that particular product.

Tip: Never be afraid to promote a product that's popular. Just because there are other affiliate marketers promoting it like crazy, it does not mean that there's to much competition. A hot selling product means there's a market for it, and that's a good thing.

4) Focus on niche marketing:

This is a cornerstone principle of affiliate marketing. Niche definition: 'Concentrating all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well defined segment of the population.' For example, affiliate marketing would be one segment of the huge home based business population. The articles I post here are for people who are interested in affiliate marketing and are looking for basic training to get them started.On occasion I will recommend a product to my readers that will help them on their journey towards owning and building a thriving online business. Every product review and recommendation I give is always related to the affiliate marketing niche. I would not, for example, recommend a mlm company for my readers to join because it's not really related to the niche of this blog. Mlm and affiliate marketing are completely different niches.

An example of some of some of the niche related products I promote on this blog can be found on these pages:

At some point in time you're going to need to invest in paid advertising to boost sales and brand awareness. While it's true that you can drive traffic to your offers through free advertising, paid advertising can bring much quicker returns, if done correctly.I was watching a marketer, on a free webinar, publish a paid ad in real time and the results were staggering. After punching the go button for this advertisement, it took around ninety minutes for his ad budget to be depleted. His spend was, if memory serves, $279. His total sales came to $890. Now that's a pretty good ROI (return on investment).Although these results are not typical, they are possible if you really know what you're doing. My point is that paid advertising can be a powerful tool to have in your marketing arsenal.

6) Own a domain name or two:

Affiliate links are often long and ugly looking, not mention that these links can be compromised by anyone who knows a little about coding. These crooks can and do steal affiliate commissions by manipulating affiliate links.

Although not 100% foolproof, using a domain name with the forwarding option enabled will help prevent some of this crime. Domain names are cheap at places like GoDaddy, or Bluehost. They'll only cost you around $10 a year. Once you have your domain name registered, simply grab your affiliate link and add it into the 'forward field' and you're good to go.

Warning: Do not use the 'masking' option on your affiliate link. Using the masking option, according to ClickBank.com, will mess up the affiliate tracking properties in your link. This means you may not get credit for any sales you make through that link, and you don't want that!

Conclusion:The six keys outlined above are mandatory for building a profitable affiliate marketing business. Of these six keys, patients probably ranks the highest. Without exercising patience you're going to run into trouble very quickly. Above all, be patient with yourself while you're learning the necessary marketing skills needed to grow a profitable online business.

Post a Comment

Paul Beamon

Subscribe

Popular Posts

If you're on this page I assume you know very little about affiliate marketing and you're wondering what it's all about, and if you can actually make money from this industry. I asked myself this question around ten years ago, and what I discovered lead me directly into the wonderful world of online marketing.
So can you actually make money from affiliate marketing? Yes! Some people are making bucket loads of money, some people are making a reasonable living, and some people are content just to make a little extra each month to pay the mortgage or save for that dream vacation.
You most likely won't be making loads of money overnight or even in your first year of affiliate marketing, but if you're willing to become a student and put into practice whatever you learn you'll be on your way to creating an additional income for yourself.
One of the most important keys to building a profitable online affiliate marketing business is patience. Success will not happen o…

Does Safelist Marketing work? That is a good question to ask, especially if you're trying to find new leads for your business. The short answer to this question is Yes. The long answer requires a little more of an explanation.
Many people just starting out, with an online business, sooner or later discover safelist marketing. This is what happened to me and no doubt has happened with you. I can honesty say, from personal experience, that saflelist marketing does work.
I can also confidently tell you that safelist marketing will work for you as well. However, it will only work for you if you know what you're doing. A common complaint I see being thrown around in forums and social media sites, is that "safelist marketing just doesn't work." Or "safelists only deliver junk traffic." Really?! Then how come I'm getting subscribers everyday from safelists? How come I'm building my business almost exclusively from safelist mailers?
The answer to that …

With much enthusiasm, I first got involved with network marketing about ten years ago (at time of this post). I could see its potential to make me wealthy or at least financially independent. The reality for me, however, was something totally different.
Hi, my name is Paul Beamon and this is my story:
Actually my story, with network marketing, began in 1998 when I met a bloke at a church meeting. This guy was into Amway and he was really passionate about his business which got me curious. Long story short, after a lengthy discussion with this guy he invited me to see a business presentation.
What he shared with me made a lot of sense so I jumped in feet first boots and all. I don't know if you know anything about Amway, but at the time when I joined there was no Internet marketing for network marketers. Basically you had to invite all your family and friends and once you're done annoying them you had to approach complete strangers, yuk!
Now this might be okay for some people,…

As an affiliate marketer sooner or later you're going to need to consider adding an autoresponder to your marketing portfolio. Truth be told, you can't really make a good income without such a tool. So what exactly is an autoresponder?
An autoreponder is a program that delivers email messages to your own subscriber base on auto pilot. All you have to do is a little work on the front end, then set and forget, well almost. There is a little regular maintenance to be performed but it's really no big deal, not in my opinion anyway.
Every truly successful affiliate marketer will have this tool in their marketing portfolio, and with good reason. Sales are made on a continual basis once you've got everything set up correctly. I've heard testimonials of marketers making several thousand dollars just from one email.
This is no exaggeration, it actually happens all the time! There's a saying in the affiliate marketing world that you're going to hear sooner or later…